


Day of the Dead

by thedevilchicken



Category: Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Insanity, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-03-17
Updated: 2004-03-17
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:37:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4240995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years on, El celebrates his birthday. And the Day of the Dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day of the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal on 17 March 2004.

El was turning forty. _Forty_. Maybe he should have felt worse about it but it was such a minor blip on the radar as far as El's soap opera of a life was concerned that it really didn't bother him. Considering everything he'd had thrown at him over the years, he couldn't have cared less about forty. 

Except that for a couple of weeks he'd been getting this... _feeling_ , like something was going on. It was all so perfectly clichéd - whispering voices that cut out as soon as he came near, guilty glances, papers shuffled away under half-made guitars. He knew the signs. Someone had found out - probably from Lorenzo or Fideo - that he had a birthday coming up. Of all the stupid and admittedly sweet and thoughtful things to do for a Mexican gunfighter, the villagers were throwing him a surprise party. 

So that was why he'd left. Four days ago now, on the rickety, once-a-day bus that came through town at stupid o'clock every morning and didn't come back till Friday night. He didn't do surprises; he liked plans. So instead of waiting for the party he knew he didn't want any part of but would definitely thank them for later, he was sitting outside a rundown little café under a voluminous parasol with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles on the spare seat opposite. He was back in Culiacán. It was two days from the Day of the Dead. 

That was how he rationalised it, when he saw him; it was three years almost to the day since the Barillo-Marquez attempted coup d'état, since he'd met Sheldon Sands. Of course he'd think about him, think he was seeing him, considering what had happened that day. Sometimes he thought he saw Carolina, shuffling through crowds, waitressing, browsing in bookshops in towns she'd never seen, and this was the same thing. Seeing Sands in the street for a second, with a cane in his hand and dark glasses covering his otherwise glaring lack of eyes, was just his memory and his mind playing tricks. 

He was still telling himself that, sitting outside the café, even though it wasn't just the once that he saw him or thought he did. He sat at the table and closed his eyes and told himself in no uncertain terms that it meant nothing if he'd been there in the town for four days and he'd seen Sands at least nine times. In shops, across squares, in a market while he was trying to buy fruit... Once he thought he saw him driving down the street in a busted old Cadillac, though that was impossible because c'mon, Sands had no eyes and really, what the fuck would he be doing back in Culiacán anyway? Returning to the scene of the crime? Visiting the guys who took his eyes?

El put down the newspaper he wasn't actually reading and folded it in half before he slipped his feet from the chair and left the café. It was dusk and the air was still warm; he walked with his jacket slung over his shoulder, the chains adorning his trousers clinking with each lazy step he took. Maybe someone would recognise him dressed that way, but he didn't really care these days; he was carrying three guns and was secure in the knowledge that he was a better shot and a faster draw than half the assassins in Mexico put together. And really, what was one more gunfight? 

Then there he was. Sands. 

He was in the street, just walking along minding his own business. But the streets were full, so when El broke into a run it was very much of the halting variety, with much cursing and alternate apologising and shoving people unceremoniously from his path. He could see Sands' head bobbing in the crowd, still moving away from him. He could feel the jolt of his heels against the hard ground as he ran. The lack of pace was maddening. Had the street been clear, he would've had him pinned to a wall already. 

Sands turned a corner and El pushed between two guys who looked distinctly like they'd gone AWOL from some US college football team. One grabbed El's arm and swung him around, holding him back - for a moment El just stared at him, wide-eyed with an apology on the tip of his tongue, before he twisted from his grasp and ran, both guys yelling ineffectually after him. 

At last, he turned into the alley, gasping for breath. Sands wasn't there, which was impossible. But impossible clearly didn't matter because Sands really wasn't there. The alley was empty. 

El just turned and walked away, feeling faintly ridiculous. One half-mile walk and two unconscious football players later, El was back in his hotel, cursing the day he'd met Sheldon Sands. 

***

The streets were deserted as he walked up to the church, not so much as a flower-seller or a bloody-minded tourist in sight under the low, scarlet sun. The click of his boot heels echoed loudly from the walls and down the dusty roads that wound out like deep red ribbons through the town. The jangling of his chains seemed almost deafening.

He took the shallow steps slowly then pushed open the heavy wooden doors and stepped inside. The air was hot and close and stale, filled with the smell of candle wax and age and time. The vaulted ceiling hung like a great dark canopy suspended high above him. Flames shone in the dark, lighting up the spaces, the high places, the long aisle, row upon row of wooden pews, with a rich, low burn. 

El could see someone, just one, on his knees before the altar and the cross. So he moved, forward; the place was silent, shrouded in silence that his movement ruptured with clinks and jangles better suited to the bars and brothels than a house of God. El felt his face flush, and not from the heat. He was ashamed in the presence of that man in prayer, so devout. He felt so damnably ashamed, unworthy. 

His head was bowed, his hands pressed tight together as he prayed or had the seeming of it. His long dark hair made almost bronze in the candlelight hung forward to his face, over his shoulders clothed in black. He bowed so low, whispered, murmured with such fervour... El came closer. He wanted to hear. He needed to. 

But the man stopped. He sat up, his back suddenly straight as a blade. He swept the hair from his face and he turned to El. 

He felt a prickle of sweat stand out on his back, on his brow. "Sands," he said. 

But Sands didn't respond - at least not in words. Blood streaked his cheeks, flowing from his empty eyes like tears. One drop, one tear, slipped down to his lips; his tongue darted out to lick it away and El could almost taste it in his own mouth, hot and thick, metallic. It left Sands' lips moist and red.

He reached out and before El had time to stop him Sands had taken his hands in his. They were wet and warm and El looked down; there it was, red and spreading over his palms. He tried to shake him off but Sands' grip just tightened. Tighter. Tight enough to bruise. 

Then he let go. El slipped, staggered back a few steps, his worn Cuban heels slipping on the polished, chequered floor. He wiped his hands on his thighs and down the front of his white shirt. There was still blood sticky between his fingers even when his handprints were smeared all over the white cloth. 

"You left me here," Sands said, accusing, on his knees. "You left me lying here." He stretched out his arms, wide, out to his sides, palms to El. There were holes right through. The light from a thousand candles shone through them as he bled into pools on the floor. 

"You left me here," he said, his voice low and almost, _almost_ sad. He stood. He took a step forward, arms still outstretched. El couldn't move. Sands took his head in his hands, ran his bloody fingers through his hair. He stepped closer, till El was staring straight into the hollows of Sands' eyes. 

"You left me here to die." Sands reached out and pushed. And El went down, wide-eyed. 

He could almost feel the consciousness seeping from him, even as he woke. 

***

It wasn't the worst dream he'd ever had by a long shot, and he didn't wake up bathed in sweat or gasping for breath. Perhaps his heart was beating a little faster, but that was something he could cope with. Besides, he had more important things to worry about than the crazy-ass night-time spawn of his overactive subconscious. 

Like the fact that it was his birthday. Not that it mattered as such and the age didn't matter at all, but he felt like it should be marked by _something_ , even if it was just taking himself to the nearest bar and drinking himself stupid. 

In the end, after a quick shower and the horrible hotel breakfast that he kept telling himself _had_ to get better tomorrow, he decided that 10am was a little too early to hit the bar. He'd have to find something else to keep himself occupied, for the time being. 

So he wandered in the streets for a while, then got himself a coffee and took his favourite table at the little rundown café - it was the perfect position to keep watch, with clear, sweeping views of the street to either side. He read half a newspaper and fiddled with a crossword and told himself the guy at the vastly more expensive café down the street was definitely _not_ Sands, no matter how much he might think he looked like him. He stayed under the parasol until he'd eaten lunch and the guy was gone. 

Then he found a launderette and sat in a pair of cheap sweatpants and a grey t-shirt while he watched his clothes spin and carefully refused the advances of the girl at the next machine. He went back to the hotel afterward to change and stood for fifteen minutes in front of the bathroom mirror just staring at his shirt like Sands' blood was still all over it. It wasn't. He told himself it wasn't. He'd washed blood out of the shirt before - none of it now visible - and none of it had ever belonged to Sands. 

Then he went out. He treated himself to a good meal in a good restaurant; he was tempted to order the pork but was a little worried what he might do if it happened to be any better than expected. He really hadn't been himself for the past couple of days. He was beginning to wish he'd stayed for the surprise party after all. 

He finished the day off in a bar, at the bar, the barman learning quickly that it really wasn't advisable to ask the slightly oddly dressed brandy-drinker by the non-functional jukebox exactly why he was drinking so much. The money kept coming, and so did the drinks.

He'd half expected Sands to turn up that day, sometime, anytime, with a smile and an obscenely large frosted birthday cake. He'd almost rehearsed what he'd say while in the shower that morning, shampooing his hair while he wondered if he'd kiss him or kill him. He'd decided not to think about it in the end - he'd let it be a surprise. Of course presuming that Sands really did turn up. Which he didn't.

Brandy really didn't agree with him. At some point he switched to tequila and soon after that he was too drunk to remember much of anything. That was exactly the way he wanted it. The perfect end to the perfect post-Carolina birthday. 

***

"Wake up, El."

He was already awake, except he wasn't awake. Blank, he swung his legs from the bed. The floor was mysteriously warm beneath his bare feet and somehow his black silk pyjamas weren't pushed up past his knees. It occurred to him only in passing that he didn't actually own any black silk pyjamas, and he slept naked anyway. 

"El, come outside."

The window was open. That window there in El's house was never open - the wood had swelled and permanently locked it shut - but it was open. El went to it and the full moon outside was huge and almost blinding, if a little... blue. Everything was blue, even Sands' hair and Sands' skin and the light reflecting in Sands' wraparound sunglasses. And whatever it was that Sands was holding in his hands, dark and wet and glistening. El wondered what it was, though it wasn't real curiosity. He was more concerned by the fact that he knew he was still dreaming. 

"Come the fuck down, El. I've got something to show you."

He knew it was a dream because he stepped out of the front door and into the centre of Culiacán. He was outside the town hall, standing on the dusty street in the dark, and Sands was standing there with his back to the big blue moon, his hands stretched out in front of him. 

Whatever it was that Sands was holding, one in each hand, it was dripping. He couldn't see Sands' face. His slight, black-clothed body cast a long shadow down the street between the two of them. El didn't want to see. 

"Come see!"

He couldn't stop himself. He moved forward. 

Sands was grinning, showing off his sharp white teeth. He looked so happy, if a little psychotic, and El found himself inexplicably grinning back in spite of himself, despite the ugly, empty feeling that he had inside and the obvious fact that Sands couldn't see. El stared, at the shadows that fell over Sands' exultant face. He reached out and smoothed back a stray lock of oddly blue-tinged hair from Sands' forehead. Sands just grinned a little more broadly. El was almost surprised. 

"Look, El." Sands nodded to the things that he was holding in his hands. El looked down. 

Everything was blue in the world except for the things in Sands' hands. They were bright red. Bloody eyes lay in one hand, a bloody red heart in the other. 

El retched suddenly, doubled over at the waist, then he looked back up as Sands. He was still grinning like absolutely nothing was wrong, like everything was just so very _right_.

"It's yours," Sands said, nodding at the heart; El looked at it again, sitting there bloody and raw in Sands' bloodstained hand. "It's yours."

_Yours_. El's blood ran cold. He squeezed his eyes shut but it was like the lids were made of glass and he could just see straight through them, right to that bloody heart. 

_Yours_. He brought his hand to this chest, moved aside the president's sash that he didn't think went too well with black pyjamas. His breath caught. The cloth was wet. His blue fingers came away sticky, sickly red. 

He looked down. He looked inside himself. His chest was gaping open. 

"It's yours," Sands said again, then held out his other hand. "They're mine." Bloody eyes, brown irises, thick tangled stalks of muscle and nerve. El felt ill. "I don't know which I want more."

He paused for a moment and tilted his head to one side, considering. He seemed to be weighing the objects in his hands, taking a few steps back as El stood rooted to the spot. Then he stopped, motionless for a second. 

"I'll keep this," he said, and smiled. "Look after these for me."

He tossed the eyes. 

As El woke, he could almost still feel Sands' cold, wet eyes in his hands. 

***

El decided not to question it when he woke up partially clothed and in bed with Lorenzo, his head throbbing, Fideo passed out on the floor. Apparently they'd turned up the previous night to help him celebrate, judging from the assortment of empty bottles littering the bare floorboards, though just how they'd know where to find him... he had a feeling he probably wouldn't like the answer, so he didn't ask. 

Lorenzo, unabashedly naked, stole his shower. Fideo, unabashedly drunk, stole his bed. So El dressed in the same clothes as the day before, smelling of stale smoke and spilled tequila; he slipped on his boots, slipped on his shirt and his jacket, and slipped out of the room. 

He took his guitar - the one not currently affiliated with firearms - and sat strumming on the steps of the church for just over an hour. It seemed to calm his head a little, from the ungodly pounding like a shotgun in his skull to something closer akin to gerbils playing with his grey matter. He played a little longer, just for the hell of it, then put away his guitar and walked through the winding streets to the café. 

The parade was just starting as the waitress brought him a strong black coffee, almost an espresso but not quite. He thanked her, tipped her not ungenerously, then settled down to his newspaper. 

"El."

He looked up. So much for his brilliant reflexes. 

He was wearing a mask in the shape of a skull, like an absconder from the day of the dead, but El knew who it was. He'd look interesting with his face painted the same way as the mask, with those dark pits where his eyes should be. He'd really scare the kids. 

"Sands."

"Mind if I join you?" He didn't wait for an answer, just pulled out the spare seat, dislodging El's feet to the ground, and sat down. He tossed his mask onto the table, saying nothing else, and El didn't exactly make an outstanding effort at conversation. He just sat there almost staring, not really sure what he was staring _at_ exactly since Sands' eyes or lack thereof were covered quite completely by his dark glasses and long hair, while the guy he'd really believed he was imagining ordered a cappuccino. El just wondered what he was doing there, then. 

"I come back every year," Sands said, like he was reading his mind. "Maybe that's a little morbid but there you go. I kept expecting to see you - okay, _meet_ you - though I don't exactly know why. I mean, I didn't even know you were alive." He paused, took a sip of his coffee. "You know, the Company gave me the axe? Not quite literally but since I've got no fucking eyes they might as well have. So, how are you?"

El blinked. "Here," he said. 

Sands nodded like that made perfect sense. "Yes, you are," he said. "And so am I. Somewhat worse for wear, but here. I guess the question is, where do we go _from_ here?" El shrugged, and though Sands obviously couldn't see it, he seemed to understand the motion. "Your place or mine?"

Oddly, El's first thought was 'Lorenzo and Fideo are in my room' and not 'why the fuck would I go anywhere with Sands?'

"Yours," he said, without really thinking it through. And they left. Sands obviously forgot to pay his bill, so El paid it for him. 

***

El couldn't decide if he was surprised or not at Sands' choice of hotel. He almost had him pegged for a slightly upmarket sort, but the place he led El into was almost as lousy as the room currently housing El's two friends and their hangovers. Of course, that didn't mean Sands didn't have another room elsewhere that El wouldn't get to see. El didn’t fool himself that he knew all Sands’ secrets.

Sands locked the door behind them and pinned El back against it, his arm barred across his chest and a gun to his head that he'd seemingly produced from thin air. El tapped the barrel of his own gun - one of them, anyway - against the inside of Sands' thigh. 

"Clever boy," Sands said. "Would you really shoot a blind man?"

"Yes."

Sands smirked. "Good. Now that we've got that over with..." And with the gun still pressed to El's head, he leaned in for a kiss.

El had no idea what he was doing there, really, kissing Sands and pointing a semi-automatic weapon at his suddenly bulging crotch. It seemed like a good idea at the time, back at the café, after what, five, six torturous days not knowing if he'd seen the man or not. Though, now he thought about it, he still didn't know that he'd seen him before the café. For all he knew, Sands had got there that morning and he'd been imagining things all week. 

"When did you get here?" El gasped, pulling back and hitting his head against the door in the process. Sands tossed his gun into a chair and El dropped his, safety on, onto the floor, so they could get their hands on each other. 

"I've always been here. Now fucking kiss me before I snap your fucking neck."

El kissed him. Sands' mouth was warm and tasted of coffee over tequila and lime. Sands' hands went to his hair, twining tightly, almost painfully, and El pulled him in closer by his almost too-slim waist. He couldn't breathe. He didn't want to pull back. 

Somehow they ended up on the bed, fully clothed. El reached for Sands' glasses but a quick 'nuh-uh' told him to leave well alone. Sands tugged at El's jacket and with a little help managed to get it off and to the floor. His shirt followed, then Sands' goofy-ass 'C\:DOS, C:\DOS\RUN' shirt. El's boots and Sands' sneakers and El's pants and Sands' jeans and both of them had foregone underwear so they were left naked with Sands straddling El's thighs and pulling something from a bag that was sitting on the floor. Lube. Christ, this had gone too far. Except he knew he couldn't stop. He just couldn't stop. 

"I want you in me," Sands said, breathed, bending low beside El's ear as he slicked one lubricant-cool hand over El's ridiculously hardened cock. "And I'll shoot you if I don't get what I want."

El didn't doubt it; he could feel the gun at his throat. 

Somehow he kept completely still as Sands teased his cock with his fingertips, the muzzle of the gun. Sands' free hand pushed at his shoulder, over his collarbone, with crushing force he hadn't known the other man possessed, and El just gasped as Sands pushed down against him, forcing him inside. Not what he'd wanted. Not what he'd expected. None of that mattered - he wanted it now. 

***

The sky was a blazing yellow and everything everywhere as far as El could see was desert. The world was almost blinding and it seemed he was the slim black centre of it all, the dark centre in this universe of light. 

He stood there for what seemed like an age, baking beneath the huge and blazing sun. His skin felt dry, almost desiccated on his bones, stretched tight and thin. It felt like death had come for him. 

Then he moved. He picked up his right foot and moved it forward just one pace; it felt leaden, like his boot or the fabric of his trousers was weighing him down as his muscle wasted away beneath. But he knew he had to move. Though, as he did so, it felt as if the universe moved with him; every step he took he remained at the centre of it all, under the sun that was always immediately overhead like a scorching, searing spotlight. 

His boots caught on the stones at his feet and he tripped, he fell. He went to his knees and they felt broken, jarred by his fall. He couldn't cry out because his throat was parched. He fell flat. He had to move, so he crawled. 

Then the earth was wet, and dark. He opened his eyes but they were almost blind; all he could make out was a formless patch on the ground before him, and a shape rising out of it. Somehow he found the strength to heave himself up to his broken knees. He laid his fingers on the shape, and he knew what it was. 

Carolina's gravestone. 

There was only one word carved in the stone - Carolina. Everyone in the village had known her, and everyone knew whose grave that stone marked; it needed no more words. He would have cried then if there'd been tears left in him. 

Then the ground by the stone began to crumble and El watched through his sun-scorched eyes. It caved in, fell apart, and something was coming out of it, shining, silvery-gold metallic in the harsh light. He couldn't move; he just watched as the thing snaked closer and closer, and then he realised what it was just a second too late. The cuff snapped shut around his wrist, and locked. He was chained to her grave. He was chained to whatever there was _inside_ her grave. He was chained to _her_.

The ground was bleeding. Around the chain the ground was dark and red and bloody and he stared at it, terrified that somewhere down there Carolina was bleeding and breathing, that he'd buried her alive. But the ground was dark, in shadow now, and he knew in a sudden flash that the ground wasn't bleeding - it was being bled upon. He didn't need to turn his head. He knew that Sands was behind him. He turned anyway. 

Sands. 

He walked around El's kneeling, shrivelling form and stood behind the headstone. El peered up at him. He heat seemed to have no effect on Sands - he looked just the same as he always had. His eyes were bleeding. 

"Que quieres en la vida?" Sands asked, placing his hands on the headstone, leaning down and bleeding on it. 

"Her," said El. His voice was ragged. The word cut into him like knife. 

Sands shook his head; blood spattered on the ground and on El's hands that were stretching out toward her grave. "Wrong answer," he said. And the cuff sprang open. 

***

"Sands!"

"Hey! I know I'm not the most--" pant "--original fuck in the world--" pant "--but call me by the--" pant "--right name, at least!"

Oh God. Lorenzo. He was fucking Lorenzo. He'd just come inside Lorenzo. 

"Fuck."

"That was the general idea, yeah."

El squeezed his eyes shut. He could still feel Sands tight around him. Sands who wasn't Sands but Lorenzo. _Lorenzo_.

"I can't... I shouldn't have... I can't do this." He manhandled Lorenzo off of him and onto the bed, wiping himself hastily on the sheet before starting to pull on his clothes as quickly as was within the bounds of human possibility. 

"You're the one who started it," Lorenzo called as El disappeared out the door. He couldn't deny it. He'd just thought he was someone else. 

The clock tower told him it was a little past 10:30am as he strode down the street, trying to figure out just what in the hell had happened to him. The only logical conclusion he could come to was that he was losing his damn mind. And all over some fucking American who probably wasn't even living, let alone in Culiacán. 

He took his usual seat at the café but he wasn't feeling like himself. He couldn't read the newspaper - he quit when realised he'd read the same line about the dia de los muertos maybe six or seven times. He folded the paper in half and left it on the table while he drank his coffee, which just made him edgy. Edgier. Lorenzo. Fuck. Perhaps not a huge deal in the scheme of things but Christ, not _now_. Not now. 

He had his guitar by his feet. He tipped the waitress - at least twenty percent too much, he realised as he walked away - and left the café. He sat on the steps by the church and he took out his guitar. He thought maybe playing would help clear his mind, to straighten things out, but he couldn't think, couldn't even play. He broke a string within the first ten minutes. How he was supposed to play without his D-string he wasn't sure. So he packed away the guitar and went looking for a music shop. 

The look on his face must have been terrifying, judging from the reactions of the first two people he asked for directions. By the third he'd calmed down just enough to ask politely for a place he could buy guitar strings, and remained calm just long enough to get the directions straight in his head. The parades were starting. The music had started. He needed strings. 

He found the shop and bought a string; he was in luck - the owner was just about to leave to watch the parade when he walked in. He tucked the string into his inside jacket pocket by his shiny silver pistol and left the shop. 

The parade was passing by. He stood for a moment, his case in his hand and his head reeling as the costumed people strode and danced through the street, in costumes and masks or face paints. He'd thought that was yesterday. He'd heard the sound of the parade as he'd left the café with Sands. But Sands hadn't been there. _He_ hadn't been there. He needed a drink. Christ, he needed a drink. He made for the nearest bar. 

He didn't make it past the nearest alley. 

Up against the wall, gun out, pressed to his attacker's head. He blinked. A gun tapped at his inside thigh. He blinked again. Sands. Again. He was staring into the dark glasses over Sands' hollowed eyes, just inches away. He could almost see through the glass. Almost.

"Are you real?" he said before he knew he'd meant to speak, before he knew he'd meant to ask. 

"I'm real."

Then he kissed him. El kissed Sands, hard, pulling the gun from his forehead and pulling him in tight against him by the silver buttons of his black coat, hot and thin and solid. He tasted of tequila, and lime. 

"You feel real," El said, pressing at the muscles in Sands' back. He felt real. 

"I'm real." Sands frowned, nearly smiling, amazed. "And you're as crazy as I am." He lifted his gun, running it over El's neck as he leant hard against him. He brought up El's free hand and bit down on the fleshy heel of his thumb until he drew blood; El looked down at it, the ring of teeth marks, seeping blood, places where his skin would bruise. He was marked now, marks belonging uniquely to Sands. He found he didn't mind one bit. 

"I think maybe you're right," El said. He thought maybe he was. Or at least he was on his way. The thought was strangely calming. It should have been anything but.

Sands smiled. "So stick with me," he said, and ran his thumb along the line of El's jaw. El shivered, his eyes drifting closed as he leant into the touch. "It can only get better from here."


End file.
